She knows
by jennywinger
Summary: Olivia and the downward spiral she's might be on. One-shot.
**One-shot. Please enjoy.**

She knows it's happening. She does. She knows what it is, and what it will do to her. She's seen it before. She knows she can't let it consume her and yet she also knows she's slowly allowing it to take over her life. She knows all this, and yet here she is. Her son fast asleep in a newly decorated room not thirty feet away, her phone always moments away from buzzing with the next life-shattering event. Sometimes she wishes she did homicide. Horrible crimes all the same, but the victims didn't have that look in their eyes. That look that said: 'Can I ever trust anyone again?' or 'How do I tell people?', 'Can they see it, when they look at me?' and 'Will I ever get my life back?' She knows that look. Maybe it's because she's seen it in thousands of victims. Maybe it's because sometimes she still sees it when she looks in the mirror. Who knows?

All she knows right now is that the cork is giving her a hard time. The bottle-opener must've lost a part or something because one of the handles refuses to help her. When she was in college she and her friends had opened a bottle by placing it in a shoe and pounding it against the wall. She thinks about it but it's not so clever now as it was then, seeing how she has an infant child that finally sleeps through the night. Sometimes. He probably did it once this week. But it was a victory all the same. Not that it matters much. With all the crap that has been going on lately she's had a lot more paperwork. And a lot less time to fill it. When Noah woke up, around two or three, she was just about ready to brush her teeth and go for those well deserved four hours of sleep. A quick lullaby and a reminder that she'll always be there for him usually did the trick and he'd be off. She hopes he doesn't notice the faint smell of liquor on her breath, or that her singing is more slurred at night than it is by day. He's just a toddler, she figures. And then she tries to remember if she'd ever smelled the vodka on her own mother when she came in for a bedtime story.

It's frustrating, not being able to open a bottle. Humiliating. She's a cop, she's strong, she's independent. She should be able to open a wine-bottle. She knows that jamming a knife in there would only result in a red wine eruption. There are still some splatters on the ceiling in her old apartment. She kind of misses her old place. She'd lived there for a while. It was bigger.. Her new place has larger windows and it's closer to home. The kitchen is smaller but the second bedroom is much bigger. And then of course there was the fact that she hadn't been assaulted here. That's always a plus.  
She misses her old furniture. Lewis had wrecked most of it. Why he found joy in randomly stabbing her fauteuil she didn't know. She'd only been able to salvage one of the dining-room chairs. She'd been surprised when there wasn't a speck of blood or other bodily fluids on one of them. Two had sigaret burns, the others, who knows. But one was clean. She'd wiped away a thin layer of dust. Brian had tried to convince her to keep it. The next day she'd sat next to her window, waiting for hours until the garbagemen came and threw it in their truck. She'd smiled at the strange feeling of satisfaction when she heard the soft noise of wood snapping.

She was upset about her couch though. Her old couch was so ugly in every way. A lumpy monstrosity. It was lumpy because her partner had spend many a night on it. Because they'd been working all night and going home just to go to work five minutes later didn't make any sense. To sleep off a bender. Because he and his wife had had a terrible fight and she'd kicked him out. When he and Kathy had been going through divorce-proceedings he'd slept in a hotel for a week before he knocked on her door. Said he couldn't sleep without knowing there was someone near-by. And it made sense. He hadn't since he was in his teens. So she offered up her couch to him and he'd gratefully accepted. Living with Elliot was both great and the most frustrating experience she'd ever had. Kathy was a stay-at-home wife, so she did most of the cooking, cleaning and washing. Elliot had grumbled over the years that he helped too. Olivia realized in that Elliot's description of 'helping' was vacuuming once every four days. He was confused as to his dirty clothes and why she didn't just throw them in with hers. She'd forced him once to do it but Elliot, being the stubborn man-child that he is, had apparently never washed clothes in his entire life. On the plus side, it gave her a reason to go shopping after all of her white shirts and socks had become a soft blue.  
They watched movies and series while they did their paperwork. They'd made it a routine to fall asleep on the couch together. They'd both needed that. The couch didn't. It became lumpy. But after Elliot had walked out, the couch still had his imprint. Sometimes when she sat there, she thought she could smell him. Sometimes she fell asleep and when she woke up the next morning, for a very brief second she'd think it was 2005 again. But then Lewis had forced his way into her life, he'd mocked her ugly couch after he made her sit on it. He'd almost raped her on that couch.

The one she had now was black, much fancier. More expensive. She could afford it. Everything in her new apartment was new and expensive. Nothing looked like she'd ever imagined her life would look. She would never even have thought of dating Tucker, or that she'd be living so close to work in such a good neighborhood. She'd never have hoped to become lieutenant or that she'd still be working in the same unit but without Elliot. And never, in her wildest dreams could she've ever dreamed of a boy so beautiful and sweet as Noah. And that's why she knows she has to stop. Or child-protective services would take him away from her.

She knows she has to stop. She takes she bottle she knows she won't open tonight and puts it back in a kitchen-cabinet. She reaches into another and gets an old bottle, one like she used to buy when she didn't want to drink and if she did, it was a round of beer. It's a bottle that's very much like her in a strange way. It's cheap and imperfect, compared to the state of her apartment, of her life. But it has one benefit; it has a twisty top.

END

Thankyouuuuu for reading


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